Mathematics in Movies

Mathematics in Movies: Prof. Oliver Knill, Department of Mathematics Harvard University.
-Ref.: www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies/

"During the years, I developed also a passion for mathematical problems in computer science especially for various inverse problems, whether it is in analysis, geometry or cryptology. Inverse problems in computer vision are currently at the top my list. Here is some work done in the Summer of 2007 with Jose Ramirez which continued with a award winning master thesis of Jose at the extension school. Elizabeth Slavkovsky currently writes a thesis on 3D printing in education." Oliver Knill
- Ref.: www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/math/

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PageRank and Google

The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million. (Google history)

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank) and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine.

Relevance: As Larry said long ago, we want to give you back “exactly what you want.” When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data. Today we use more than 200 signals, including PageRank, to order websites, and we update these algorithms on a weekly basis. For example, we offer personalized search results based on your web history and location. (www.google.com)

Note: Massimo Marchiori - He was the creator of HyperSearch, a search engine where the results were based not only on single pages ranks, but also on the relationship between the single pages and the rest of the web. Afterwards, Google co-founders Page and Brin cited HyperSearch when they introduced PageRank. He is one of the co-authors of the world standard for privacy on the Web, P3P. He started the XML Query effort at W3C, and is one of the authors of the XQuery family of world standard for querying information on the Web.
Ref.: Page, Lawrence and Brin, Sergey and Motwani, Rajeev and Winograd, Terry (January 29, 1998). "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web." (Stanford University, Retrieved May 12, 2011)
- http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf

"Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed."

"Moore’s Law was defined in 1965 as a doubling every 18 months in processor power. It has held remarkably true, not just for processors, but for other important system parameters such as disk as well. If we assume that Moore’s law holds for the future, we need only 10 more doublings, or 15 years to reach our goal of indexing everything everyone in the US has written for a year for a price that a small company could afford. Of course, hardware experts are somewhat concerned Moore’s Law may not continue to hold for the next 15 years, but there are certainly a lot of interesting centralized applications even if we only get part of the way to our hypothetical example."
Ref.: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 30: 107–117, 1998.
- http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf (pdf)

Google philosophy (Ten things we know to be true)
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
"The world is increasingly mobile: people want access to information wherever they are, whenever they need it. We’re pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions for mobile services that help people all over the globe to do any number of tasks on their phone, from checking email and calendar events to watching videos, not to mention the several different ways to access Google search on a phone. In addition, we’re hoping to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, a free, open source mobile platform. Android brings the openness that shaped the Internet to the mobile world. Not only does Android benefit consumers, who have more choice and innovative new mobile experiences, but it opens up revenue opportunities for carriers, manufacturers and developers."

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InTech - Books and Journals

InTech is a multidisciplinary Open Access publisher of books and journals covering the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine: www.intechopen.com

InTech is a world leader in the provision of STM Open Access content, including books and journals. We break down the traditional barriers to becoming published and provide authors with new choices and an equal opportunity to share their ideas and the results of their research with the global scientific community.

Ref.: http://www.intechweb.org/

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Invention of the microprocessor

1959 - invention of the integrated circuit: co-inventor Robert Noyce of Intel (UpDate: la 12 oct. 2011 Google a sarbatorit 84 de ani de la nasterea lui Robert Noyce)
1971 - invention of the microprocessor (4004): Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, Stanley Mazor of Intel and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom.

Ref.: http://www.agora.ro

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Thomas Suarez and Transforming Learning

Thomas Suarez is a 6th grade student at a middle school in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Thomas Suarez - iPhone Application Developer: http://youtu.be/ehDAP1OQ9Zw



Ref.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

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Premiile CNIV 2011

În cadrul Conferinţei Naţionale de Învăţământ Virtual (CNIV 2011), au fost acordate premii pentru cele mai bune proiecte prezentate. Marele premiu de excelenţă a fost obţinut de lector univ. dr. Silvia Făt de la Facultatea de Psihologie şi Ştiinţele Educaţiei a Universităţii din Bucureşti.

Premiile Conferinţei Naţionale de Învăţământ Virtual (CNIV – www.cniv.ro) au fost stabilite pe baza celor 7 criterii de evaluare stabilite de Comitetul Ştiinţific al Conferinţei: Concepte şi idei moderne abordate; Tehnologii folosite şi implementate; Originalitatea conţinutului; Gradul de utilizare în prezent şi în viitor; Gradul de testare şi verificare; Metodologii şi standarde respectate; Complexitatea de elaborare. Pentru fiecare criteriu s-au acordat maxim 5 puncte.

După prezentarea lucrărilor în sesiunile de lucru ale CNIV, cei 350 de evaluatori au trimis prin e-mail punctajele pentru lucrările votate. O lucrare a putut fi votată numai dacă este eligibilă pentru Concursul „Software Educaţional”, adică dacă este publicată în volumul de lucrări la Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti.

Premiile CNIV 2011 au fost acordate pentru un număr de 8 lucrări din cele 54 prezentate în cadrul conferinţei şi publicate la Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti. Premiile au fost sponsorizate de compania Siveco România.

1. Premiul de excelenţă “Centrul Virtual de Excelenţă SIVECO“: Proiectul Multi-Touch. Dezvoltarea de lecţii transdisciplinare în sistemul educaţional din România (Lector univ. dr. Silvia Făt, Universitatea din Bucureşti, Facultatea de Psihologie şi Ştiinţele Educaţiei).

2. Premiul de creativitate “SIVECO“: myGreenTown (Elev Licker Nandor, dr. profesor Corina Toma, Liceul de Informatică „Tiberiu Popoviciu”, Cluj-Napoca).

3. Premiul de popularitate “SIVECO“: Principiile lui Newton (Elevi: Radu-George Rusu, Cristina Adam, Maria Mateescu, Cristinel Miron, Prof. Emanuela Cerchez, Colegiul Naţional “Emil Racoviţă” Iaşi).

4. Premiul de popularitate “SIVECO“: Camil Petrescu – Ultima noapte de dragoste, întâia noapte de război (Elevi: Bogdan Gabriel Mihai, Cristian Cojocaru, Vlad Tarcan, Ionuţ Ungureanu, Prof. Daniela Zaharia, Prof. Mirela Ţibu, Prof. Mariana Grădinariu, Liceul de Informatică „Grigore Moisil”, Iaşi).

5. Premiul de popularitate “SIVECO“: Grecia antică – Între legendă şi adevăr, soft educaţional (Elev Alin Lupu, prof. Cornelia Ivaşc, Prof. Tatiana Solcan, Liceul de Informatică “Grigore Moisil”, Iaşi).

6. Premiul de popularitate “SIVECO“: În pas domol prin lumea acceleratoarelor de particule elementare (Elevi: Cristian Zaharia, Cipriana Anghel, Ioana Bica, Camelia Popescu, Matei Militaru, Prof. Ioana Stoica, Colegiul Naţional de Informatică “Tudor Vianu” Bucureşti).

7. Premiul de popularitate “SIVECO“: AILab – Scripting Language for Artificial Intelligence (Elev Ionuţ Budişteanu, Prof. Mirela Mlisan, Colegiul Naţional “Mircea cel Bătrân” Râmnicu-Vâlcea).

8. Premiul de popularitate “SIVECO“: Învăţarea prin joc – „Aladin şi formulele magice”, Prof. Daly Marciuc, Colegiul Naţional “Mihai Eminescu”, Satu Mare).

Mai multe detalii despre CNIV şi ICVL pot fi accesate aici şi pe paginile oficiale ale conferinţelor (http://c3.icvl.eu, http://c3.cniv.ro). Turneul conferinţelor poate fi vizualizat aici.

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Education and problem-solving

Education and problem-solving vs. Reduced biological stress

"Education may also promote problem-solving skills leading to reduced biological stress responsivity, with favorable consequences for biological aging. Lower educational attainment is associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length in healthy older men and women, and may reflect more rapid cellular aging in lower socioeconomic status individuals." Andrew Steptoe (University College London), “Educational attainment but not measures of current socioeconomic circumstances are associated with leukocyte telomere length in healthy older men and women.” (Original Research Article), by Andrew Steptoe, Mark Hamer, Lee Butcher, Jue Lin, Lena Brydon, Mika Kivimki, Michael Marmot, Elizabeth Blackburn, Jorge D. Erusalimsky, In Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Elsevier Inc., 25, 1292-1298, April 2011. doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2011.04.010.

Ref.: www.unibuc.ro/prof/vlada_m/

"Each decision you make, each path you take, each risk you take helps to define who you are and who you will become. Investing the time to think through, investigate, weigh options, and then choosing your decisions carefully creates a better life."
Ref.: Chuck Clayton - www.problem-solving-techniques.com/

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Ladislau Szilagyi

Ladislau Szilagyi (studied Computer Science at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science; graduate in 1978-Informatics), expert of the Software Testing at European Quality Software Trainings (EuroQST)

Ladislau Szilagyi, owner of the EuroQST software training company, has over 30 years experience in IT as a programmer, business analyst, project manager, tester and consultant. He published articles in several software magazines (Testing Experience, Quality Matters, Core), and is a frequent speaker at software testing conferences as SEETEST, Testwarez, CzechTest. He is also an experienced software testing trainer in Romania, helping over 500 testers from Romania to pass the ISTQB foundation or advanced certification. He is the first East-European to obtain the Certified Agile Testing certification as both tester and test trainer. His current focus is on agile testing and he actively collaborates with the Romanian testing community to raise the awareness about the new challenges facing the testers in agile projects.

Ref.: http://www.agile-tester.org/
- http://www.agiletestingdays.com
- Ambassadors of the Agile Testing Days: www.agiletestingdays.com/ambassadors.php (14 - 17 November 2011: Agile Testing Days - Potsdam, Germany)

NOTE: EuroQST offers the following training courses and exams in Europe:
- Certified Agile Tester (CAT / ISQI): www.agile-tester.org/
- Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE / IREB): www.certified-re.org/

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